Can you people read?
Read all my posts before you make comments like this.
Wow!!
I can’t believe I pissed off so many people with a few simple posts!!!
Gentlemen I will be CERTIFIED DEC.4th 2007 LEVEL 1[not that it’s any of your fcking business] in the meantime I will be using this tool for basic inspections.
Thanks Guys!!
Now that’s an intelligent response!
I could say the same thing about you for making such ludicrous comments! But I didn’t.
Try this easy one out: (see picture attached)
What is this? Hint: A smoke detector.
What is happening in the scan?
What is the cause?
Maybe you can’t talk!
Hmmmm, The proof is in the pudding?
Does this mean “are not now”?
If you take the building science course, you will be certified only after you complete a field report after the course. Before that, you only have a certification of attendance!
Are you having a difficult time reading or are you just having problems comprehending?
My reading and comprehension seem to be working just fine this morning! Thank you.
From the looks of your website, it looks like you’re already in the thermography business!
Your interpretation of basic IR imaging is to locate moisture intrusion?
Or is it IR imaging with basic training?
Identifying moisture intrusion is probably one of the most complex tasks to be performed with IR technology. It’s interesting how you are attempting to use your basic knowledge to interpret the most complex tasks instead of sticking with electrical and mechanical scans which are a bit more obvious to the untrained eye.
How about taking a stab at my picture above (others already have through private messages).
My picture is a lot easier to interpret than moisture intrusion. It should be a breeze! (Hint, hint).
Some here are making the assumption that nothing can be learned without taking a classroom course. This is very incorrect. I find that most teachers have less experience than their students and absolutely no special access to information that their students couldn’t access. Furthermore, I firmly believe that 1/2 of all information taught in schools is wrong… and even worse, they can’t tell you which 1/2.
Now some things have to be taught by an expert in the subject, but rarely. You can learn almost anything without a human teacher. I’ll give you a striking example: I don’t believe Chris Morrell has ever taken a computer class in his life. He was NACHI’s webmaster at age 15 and IT Director at 17. NACHI.org is a 215,000 page, 165 million hit/year, very interactive, very complex, very fast site. One of the finest in the world.
Anyway, as for me, I consider myself to be nearly 100% self-educated and proud of it. I’m regularly asked to be an “expert” witness and when asked under oath by opposing counsel about my educational background I always reply “I’m self educated.” Attorney’s don’t know how to handle that one… because they weren’t “taught” how to in law school.
That is a very good point Nick!
However, in this application an awful lot of time must be spent in “trial and error”, with great liability involved.
Infrared light has no similarities to reflected light that we visualize through our eyes. If you don’t “think infrared” you cannot perceive what’s actually going on. We cannot formulate from past experience because we have no experience with the infrared spectrum.
Being self educated through experience with infrared equipment is Step #2.
Reference photographs and baseline scans are paramount in proper evaluation and interpretation. It may take several years of expperience to become a good thermographer.
Scott Wood at ITC has spent years at trial and error in the building science/ thermography business (becuse there was no one out there to teach him). I sincerely doubt that he would recommend the “go out there and trial and error” approach.
It would be interesting if attempts to interpret the thermal scan I posted were made.
A similar photograph was posted on the building science/thermography website (not ITC) on their “guess what this is” picture of the month.
None of the thermographers guessed correctly, so if you don’t get it, don’t feel alone out there.
Thermography is an analytical approach to assessing building science issues. Understanding building science and being a good home inspector should raise questions as to what you see in the scan, which will lead to further investigation of the anomaly. We cannot inspect through photographs, but we can think it through. If your camera produced this photograph, what would you do next?
How many of you calibrate your moisture meter before use? I bet not many if any? I know I don’t but occassionally I will use the calibration check as instruted in the manual.
David A.,
Posting that picture without the corresponding visual light photo is of little value and proves nothing:mad:.
There is little or no application for determining “what is the cause” with out using both the visual and IR spectrum.
Building science training is valuable but so is hands on experience in real world applications.
Dave you are coming down a little hard on Mario.
He is taking a defensive position as a result.
As for myself I am not looking forward to spending such a huge amount of money on a tool that still needs an interpretor.From your explanation of how complex it is I would have to think we should just forget this technolgy exists since it is akin to reading tea leaves.
Now my question if you get over the above comment is this.
Even if you are trained ,do you not go to the suspect area and use your moisture meter to confirm your findings?
If the answer is yes then why would it matter if he is untrained as he is going to go to the potential area of moisture intrusion and confirm it with a reliable tool such as a moisture meter anyway.
Make sense?
If I were an inspector and bought a new infrared camera, I wouldn’t tell anyone. Instead I’d take it and use it (when no one was watching) on my inspections for several months first, using the camera PRIOR to the inspection and using the actual inspection to confirm my infrared interpretations. Most of the time, an actual inspection can confirm what you think you are seeing with the camera. Only after these confirmations become consistent would I offer it as an additionally invoiced service.
Calibration is helpful but for the most part we are looking for conditions that exceed normal “background” or conditions whether it be moisture, CO, or combustible gas.
We are not issuing definitive reports but looking for clues that would cause us to reccommend further evaluation or repair by a qualified professional.
I’m not saying that periodic calibration should be skipped but some perhaps stress the issue more than necessary. JMHO
Makes sense Nick.
Seems like everytime new tech comes out it is made to seem mystical, when it is not.
EXACTLY:D:D
Ron Dawes,
Will you give me permission to steal, use, possibly copywrite, and otherwise pretend that I thought this string of words up first, “it is **not **rocket science but it **is **building science” 
responses in RED
I would agree with that 100%.
I never took a single college course, yet I spent two years teaching masters level computer science courses as an adjunct professor for a major university, go figure :shock::mrgreen:
As for Kenton’s original question, I would say I agree that giving away IR as a part of your normal inspection would be a bad decision in most cases.
However, I will say that I have/am considering doing just that, sort of. I’ve migrated my pricing well above that of my competition. In fact, I’m getting over $100 more per inspection then my competetors are, and it’s starting to get hard to defend. Of course, I don’t want to drop my prices, but if I don’t I probably won’t grow my market share, so what’s one to do?
Oh, and I also want to continue to have large differentiators between my service and that of my competitions. So, my current thinking is to create two offerings (I’ve heard that someone else here is an advocate of multiple service offerings, but I don’t know who that would be :mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:) one with IR and one without.
I will probably have to reduce my ‘basic’ inspection’s price a bit, maybe $25 or $50 so that it’s more in line with my competitions prices, but then I will be offering a ‘platnum’ inspection which will include the IR scan and a few other extras for probably around $50 or so more then what I charge now.
So, the two offerings will end up being about $100 apart. One will come with thermal imaging and some other features, the other will be a standard SOP home inspection. In either case if safe I will be crawling the crawls, going on the roof and writing the best report available in the area.
My market research tells me I will get more then 50% buying the premium inspections, and I’ll get a some more referrals, so the camera will result in additional revenue, but probably not repay the costs in the first year. Does that make it a bad business decision? In most cases I would say yes, but I think there is an added value to the camera.
If I have this offering, I also expect to get some referrals for followup inspections when other inspectors cannot find leaks, etc. I also expect to make the barrier to being a competator of mine much higher. All of the sudden, if the local building contractor or code inspector wants to compete with me, he now has to invest $10k or more just to be on par with my offering.
I’m still not 100% convinced, I let myself get emotionally involved in the decision while I was collecting the facts. I’ve seen far too many bad business decisions made based on emotions, so I decided to put it off until the new year, then redo my research and business plan and make the decision then.
I’ll decide how much education I need to operate the camera and interpret the images after I have it and play with it a bit. If I need the education, then I’ll get it, otherwise, I’ll save the $4-7k when you include travel expenses and lost revenue.
– bz
Again…all depends on the COMPLEXITY of the subject matter…and to what level of expert knowledge someone wishes to achieve. Basic Knowledge will get you through life…going above basic gets you imortality…man did I just say that…lol…naw…online is fine but depending on the subject level is it not superior to classroom education…i wont buy those beans.
Yes and doctors can’t perform sugery until they are certified. And they can’t practice medicine without being board certified.
If you are challenged on your IR camera findings you had better be sure you have the qualifying courses to be able to back up your findings otherwise you are up the creek.